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Satinover was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 4, 1947, to Joseph and Sena Satinover. He lived in and around Chicago until moving to California at the beginning of his high school years. Satinover won a National Merit Scholarship. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971. He obtained an Master of Education degree in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice from Harvard University, a medical degree at the University of Texas, and a Master of Science in Physics at Yale University. He received a diploma in analytical psychology from the C. G. Jung Institute of Zürich, becoming their youngest graduate. He trained there and became an accredited Jungian analyst.[1] He received a PhD in physics in the laboratory of Didier Sornette at the University of Nice in France, in 2009.[2]

Satinover served in the 1/169th combat-support helicopter battalion of the Connecticut Army National Guard as a flight surgeon and was also an Army Reserve Psychiatrist with the rank of major.

He was a fellow (resident) in psychiatry and child psychiatry at Yale, where he was twice awarded the department of psychiatry's Seymour Lustman Residency Research Prize (2nd place).[when?]

He married for the second time in 1982, having previously divorced and is the father of three daughters.[1] According to two journalists,[3] in September 1991, during the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Satinover suggested during dinner conversation with President Bush's nephew[4] that Anita Hill, if suffering from erotomania (a "delusional disorder"), might be entirely convinced that Thomas had sexually harassed her, even if he had not, just as a witness for Thomas, John Doggett, (now a conservative commentator) claimed had happened with him. She would even pass a lie detector test, as Hill had, convinced of the truth of what she was saying. Soon Satinover and another psychiatrist, Park Dietz were explaining this possibility to Thomas' Senate sponsor, John Danforth, and White House press secretary, Larry Thomas,[5] though as psychiatrists neither would testify about a patient they had not examined. (Psychiatrists brought in by the Democrats similarly refused to testify.[6] Satinover was quoted as stating that once he saw the testimony of one of Hill's main critics, John Doggett, he concluded the idea was invalid.[7]

A founder of Connecticut's Committee to Save Our Schools (CT:SOS), Satinover was active in the mid-1990s, supporting the resistance to "Outcomes-Based Education" and other related educational initiatives. Under his co-leadership, CT:SOS defeated a proposal in the Connecticut legislature to replace locally-elected school boards with a single state-appointed board, a proposal supported by a broad-based coalition of government, educational unions and corporations, particularly Union Carbide. Connecticut did not adopt the CT:SOS program of alternative, traditionalist reforms co-authored by Satinover, "Academic-Based Education", but the Board of Education of San Diego, California, then the nation's sixth largest public school system, did so.

He conducts research in complex and agent-based systems theory (econophysics, the minority game). His former areas of physics research were in fundamental quantum theory and in its application to quantum information processing and computation. Presently he is investigating certain aspects of game theory in complex systems.

Satinover's book, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (1996), published by the evangelical Christian publisher Baker Books, debates the nature of homosexuality from psychological, religious and scientific perspectives, discussing homosexuality primarily in the context of being a condition that can or should be treated, contrary to the views of the mainstream psychiatric and psychological community.[12] Satinover draws comparisons between homosexuality and various pathologies (e.g., alcoholism, pedophilia) and argues that homosexuality involves compulsive impulses. He states that homosexuality "is not a true illness, though it may be thought an illness in the spiritual sense of 'soul sickness,' innate to fallen human nature."[13] He also argues that "gay activism distorts the truth and harms not only society, but homosexuals themselves". Most of the book discusses whether homosexuality is biological and genetic and if it can be changed. About one fifth of the book discusses human sexuality from Jewish and Christian perspectives. In the book's introduction, Satinover states that "[i]n the end the debate over homosexual behavior and its implications for public policy can only be decided conclusively on moral grounds, and moral grounds will ultimately mean religious grounds."[14]

In 1997, Satinover was called by the State of Florida as an expert witness in the case Amer v. Johnson, which challenged Florida's statewide law prohibiting adoption by gays and lesbians. "Surprisingly, Satinover said in his testimony that 'if two homosexuals wanted to adopt a child, I would have no objection to it if one of them was a man and one of them was a woman...What counts, he explained, is the willingness to put one's own desires in second place. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, per se...they'd probably end up making better than average parents because of their willingness to sacrifice their own personal desires.'" Extensive scientific research demonstrates that "the 'needs' of a child includes having [both] a mother and a father...For the last 35 years there have been hundreds and hundreds of studies examining the long-term impact on children of being raised without fathers. That's because fatherlessness has become a phenomenon not primarily due to the gay movement, but due to the impact of heterosexual divorce and other forms of heterosexual misbehavior."[15][16] He said that "The state of Florida wanted me to argue that the reason the ban should be upheld was because homosexuals made bad parents and I refused to do that."[17] Citing Satinover, the presiding judge agreed that it was in the best interests of children not to be placed into a parental context of "obligatory fatherlessness" or "obligatory motherlessness", in distinction from situations where the permanent exclusion of a mother or father was not a fundamental premise (for example, single-parent adoption).[18] After several years of additional court cases relating to the Florida's anti-gay adoption ban, In re: Gill resulted in the ban being declared unconstitutional in 2010.[19]

Satinover has appeared in the media and before various American state and federal institutions to testify regarding his views on same sex marriage. In a hearing before the Massachusetts Judicial Committee in April 2003, Satinover testified that homosexuality is not immutable and that the environment plays an important role in sexual orientation.[20] Organizations that oppose the expansion of LGBT rights and protections have frequently cited his research in their position papers.[21][22][23][24][25][26]

Satinover's other writings include Cracking the Bible Code, a contribution to the contemporary debate about information purportedly encrypted into the first five books in the Hebrew Bible. The book also discusses Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, who reportedly rescued tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis through two years of face-to-face negotiations with Himmler's and Eichmann's chief overseers in Eastern Europe. The book includes previously undiscovered aspects of Renaissance history.[citation needed] For example, Satinover argues that the early cryptographic encoding wheels that Leon Battista Alberti appears to have devised, according to conventional accounts, "out of nowhere",[citation needed] are copies of first century Kabbalistic devices that Alberti, along with other Neoplatonists and so-called "Christian Kabbalists" of the Florence Academy, including Leonardo da Vinci and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, learned directly from Kabbalistic Rabbis of the era.[citation needed]

He is the author of articles, chapters, and books on topics ranging from brain neurophysiology to the psychology of narcissism to the breakdown of modern society.[citation needed] His book The Quantum Brain explores current developments at the interface of physics, computation, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. It is written for a well-educated, general readership, but it has been cited in a number of scientific publications.[27]

Satinover's current scientific research, with Didier Sornette of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, centers on studies of game theory and in particular the minority game, attending to the "illusion of control" in these games.

^"Amer v. Johnson, 4". Fla.L.Wkly.Supp. 854b (Fla. 17th Cir. 1997). The court accepted the premise that the adoption process creates a legal family relationship which aims to provide children with a permanent and stable family life, and that the best interest of the child and the well-being of those persons living within the surrogate family are the primary adoption proceeding concerns. It went on to accept expert testimony that exposure to male and female role models is of particular significance in child development. The court...found that both parents played a significant role in aiding the sexual identity development of the child. It concluded in accepting evidence that as families deviate from the male-female parent role model, the child is more prone to develop emotional handicaps and psychological dysfunctions